History

The plant was first organised as Moscow Sparkling Wines Plant (MSWP) on 25 October 1942. The enterprise was located in the very centre of Moscow, on a site of 1.5 hectares first built up in the mid-19th century when it belonged to the famous industrialist P.A. Smirnov. The enterprise had a planned capacity of 250 thousand bottles of Soviet sparkling wine per year, with 450 employees. Wine was produced using classic bottle-aging techniques, which involved a production cycle of 3 years.

Vat-based methods of Soviet sparkling wine production began to be implemented at the plant from the early 1950s onward, which allowed annual production to be raised up to 3 million bottles per year by the mid-1950s, by which time the plant's wines were already enjoying particular popularity. The large volume of research and development work performed by the specialists of the plant and other national scientific organisations resulted in development of a fundamentally new method of sparkling wine production – continuous-flow CO2 infusion. This method led to a 30% increase in the efficiency of core technical equipment, and facilitated product range expansion and quality improvement. By the end of the 1980s 95% of the USSR's sparkling wine was produced using this method. The new technique received international acclaim and was patented in many industrially developed countries. Also, many countries acquired licenses to use this method, including France (1968). With these frequent rises in production volume, MSWP has always devoted particular attention to product quality. Its products have been awarded a number of gold and silver medals, and its Soviet sparkling wine (semi-sweet) was awarded the Grand Prix at the Pardubice international contest (Czechoslovakia 1969).

In 1979, due to the industrially significant nature of the research and development work performed at MSWP, it was designated as an experimental facility, thus making it Moscow Experimental Sparkling Wine Plant (MESWP). The plant also developed a new technique of CO2 infusion using a single-container system with high unit capacity, as well as a large number of new solutions enabling production outside ordinary production facilities, thereby allowing total production to be raised to 15 million bottles per year with 257 employees. The number of prizes received by the plant's products in professional wine industry contests exceeded 100 around this time.

In 1993 MESWP was reincorporated as a joint-stock company, AOOT Kornet, becoming OAO Kornet in 1996, as it remains to the present day.

In 2005 the Kornet plant produced around 15 million bottles of sparkling wine, with turnover amounting to around 25 million dollars. The plant employs over 270 persons.

The plant's products are made using sparkling wine production techniques originating from the French region of Champagne. Centuries ago wines were produced lightly carbonated, but this also had one main drawback – a tendency toward secondary fermentation in their barrels, which would often explode. The first person to make use of this process was the monk Dom Perignon, in the 17th century. He was the first person to use blending, and also the first to pour the wine into bottles, securing the corks with an iron cage, thus keeping the carbon dioxide in place. But Dom Perignon's main achievement was the development of techniques for sparkling wine production. The key elements of this discovery lay in grape selection and identification of optimal combinations, and also the use of liqueurs, without which CO2 infusion would not be possible.

Decades later, in 1729, Ruinart, the first champagne production firm, was set up. A number of other major companies producing champagne subsequently appeared in the region. Besides Moet & Chandon, the most famous are the so-called 'Champagne Widows', chief among them Veuve Clicquot. Having been left a widow at the age of 28, in 1816 Barbe Nicole Clicquot invented an original method for removing sediment from sparkling wine. From this moment on champagne became transparent.

The first Russian sparkling wine was made in the mid-17^th century in Tsymlyanskaya and Kumshatskaya Cossack settlements on the banks of the Don River. The Tsarist-era 'Ai-Danil' sparkling wine was first produced in the 1840s on the estate of Prince Vorontsov.

However, the lion's share of the credit for reviving Russian sparkling wine production goes to Prince Lev Sergeevich Golitsyn. On his 'New World' estate he performed extensive research into the sparkling wine-production process. Drawing on his own scientific developments and huge practical experience, in 1899 Prince Golitsyn launched a brilliant run of sparkling wine – 60 thousand bottles – and in 1900 this same batch was presented at the Paris World's Fair. It was awarded the Grand Prix, and from this moment onward Russian sparkling wines were legally permitted to carry the name 'Russian champagne'.

However, in 1919 the French authorities passed a law regulating which drinks may be given the name 'champagne'. This document states that true champagne may only be prepared from certain grape varieties: Pinot Meunier, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay – and may only be produced in Champagne province. Sparkling wine producers operating in other places are only entitled to refer to their wines as produced 'according to the champagne method'. This also applies to Soviet sparkling wine and other Russian sparkling wines, which in the Russian language are called 'shampanskoe' or champagne. After Russia's WTO ascension, Russian 'shampanskoe' will be banned from carrying this name, and will be renamed 'sparkling wine' in the Russian language.